


If You're Here

by CamilaCantThink



Series: You're Alive [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Sibling Bonding, Zombie Apocalypse, zrp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 05:51:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11098242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CamilaCantThink/pseuds/CamilaCantThink
Summary: Three brothers make their way down the west coast to LA.





	If You're Here

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written as a prologue for an RP a friend and I are doing.  
> Just a heads up Maki, Ren and Mitsuru are adopted by 2 dads. It might be a little confusing to read but that's their canon background and I didn't want to change it just to make the story easier to understand.

It starts when their father stops coming home from work.

“There are a lot of critical condition patients that need me.” He says over the phone those late nights. Or would it be early mornings? “The hospital has everything quarantined. I’m not in any danger.”

They watch their dad, knuckles pale white as he grips the phone, plead with him to come home.

Each phone call their father sounding less and less like himself.  
One phone call every night.  
Every two nights.  
A week.  
Eventually they just stop.  
Maki thinks he should feel more shocked when they do.

It starts just before the government issues a city wide lockdown.  
When their dad, tired and pale with large dark circles under each eye, takes the family car to the hospital to get their father himself.  
“I’ll be right back, I promise. I just need to get your father. I’ll be home by supper.”

He kisses each of them on their head before he goes. Tells them he loves them.

\---

Later they will wonder.  
When they’re on the road or camping in the woods, far from home or any kind of civilization.  
They’ll lay awake at night and think about that day. If anything would have made a damn difference.

Maki wonders.  
He regrets.  
Had he asked him to stay. Had he run after them and forced them to stay. Convinced him not to leave. Convinced their father not to go to work all those weeks ago. Would he still be here. Would they be here in this forest, on this roadside, in this parking lot. Nervous and worried and restless. But alive. He thinks about that day and always regrets. He let his dad go. He dreams and he reaches for his dad. He reaches and grabs and begs. But he’s always too far. Always too scared. He lets him go. He lets him die. If he hadn’t been scared. If he had only been brave enough. Could he have saved him?

Ren wonders.  
He regrets.  
Had he gone after them. Would anything had changed? If he’d gone with his dad, fought them off. Left with him. Would he be here? In this tent, in this car, in this broken building. Cold and hungry and scared. But alive. He thinks about that day and always regrets. Had he said I love you too? He dreams and screams at himself. Had he ever even told his parents he loved them? It was always a scoff, an eye roll, a sarcastic remark.  
Had he ever told them how much they mattered. Did they know?

Mitsuru doesn’t regret.  
He just wonders.  
Late at night. When his brothers are asleep. He wonders where his parents are. He wonders if they’re happy. If they’re together. When they’re coming back.  
How will they find him? He wonders and wonders and wonders.  
But mostly, he thinks about that day and he hurts.  
Why didn’t they stay. Why didn’t they stay. Why didn’t they stay.

\---

It takes a week.

Seven days of telling Mitsuru their dads were busy with work.  
Four days of telling Ren what he already knew.

They load up Ren’s car with everything they need and start heading south. South to LA. To the only other family they had in this country.  
It was the first time Maki’s ever lost a parent and the first time Ren’s ever cared.  
Both brothers silently agreed to protect Mitsuru from that pain for as long as they could.

\---

The car lasts them all of 2 hours.

Which driving through back roads, overrun streets and dirt paths really only gets you to a little ways out of the city.

There was a man asking for help, clutching at his side in pain.  
Ren was driving. Narrowing his eyes he turns to his brothers.

“Keep your heads down.”

“Ren, we have to help him.” Maki thought of himself, or Ren or god forbid Mitsuru in that man’s position. “He’s hurt we can’t just leave him.”

“He’s lying.”

Ren hits the gas pedal and the man pulled out a gun.

Only 4 shots hit but it was enough. The car stops working about a mile later and the 3 brothers have to pick from their supplies carefully.

Ren opens the glove compartment and hands Maki a black handgun then pulls a silver pistol out from under the driver's seat for himself. Maki feels a lump forming in the back of his throat. He wants to ask why these are here.  
Instead he asks how he knew the man was lying.

Ren shoves the pistol into his leather jacket and avoids his older brother’s eyes.  
“I saw it in a video game. The Last of Us, it’s about zombies. Honestly people are so unoriginal.”

They both know he’s lying but neither one of them says anything more.  
Mitsuru silently clips on Zelda’s harness and leash then buries his face into her short coarse fur.

\---

If they didn’t think about why they were there this could almost be called fun.

Sure, Maki’s clothes were a mess, he smelled like sweat and he was pretty sure his brown roots were beginning to show but the three of them were together.

The three of them were alive.

They were traveling through a forest. He wasn’t really sure what forest but it helped distract the from what was happening just outside these trees.

If they didn’t think about why there were there it was almost like they were camping.

“Do you think we would find a mink! Ohhh or maybe a martin! Or a porcupine!” Zelda wags her tail happily as she trots alongside Mitsuru.

“What would a porcupine be doing in a forest, little bro?” Ren’s got an easy smile on his face as he loosely holds to leash attached to Zelda’s harness. “Wouldn’t it be more likely to find a deer or a squirrel?”

“Porcupines so do too live in forests! I learned about it from my science class this year! Ms. Veneto says they live in the redwoods!”

Ren laughs and replies with a sarcastic, “Well if Ms. Veneto says they live here it must be true.”

Watching his younger brothers like this. Happy and carefree. Maki feels the airy hope that maybe, just maybe, things would be okay.

\---

Maki remembers Ren, plucky and bruised at 14, hiding a small squirming animal under his shirt.  
His eyes bright and ecstatic with a streak of turquoise in disheveled hair. A high pitched bark comes from under Ren’s shirt and Maki’s eyes widen.

“What is that?”  
His brother grins wide, impish and self-assured.  
“I’ll show you if you promise not to tell dad!”

Now Maki sees Ren, still plucky and bruised but 19, holding Zelda against his chest.  
His eyes are hard and empty. Dried blood stains his matted hair.  
Zelda lets out a pained whine from Ren’s lap. There’s a crescent shaped bite festering on her back.  
Maki doesn’t ask what it is. He just takes Mitsuru back to the campsite and they sit in the tent in silence.

A single gunshot rings out in the distance.  
When Ren comes back 20 minutes later, hands caked with dirt and dried tear stains on his cheeks, no one asks to see her.

\---

Things get harder after that. Ren talks less. He never smiles.

\---

Realistically Maki knew they couldn’t walk the entire way down to Los Angeles.

There was no way they would make it. Not in if they wanted to find the rest of their family.

Even if they got to their aunt and uncle's house today there was no guarantee they’d still be there.

That they’d even be themselves.  
No. He couldn’t think like that.  
They'd be there.

They would be there.  
They would be there.  
They would be there.

And if he wanted any hope of getting to them he needed a car.  
He knew this.  
Maki just wished it could have been an older car.

An abandoned one.

Or one they knew for sure was abandoned.

“Aniki, it’s an unlocked van with a full tank of gas. It would be wrong of us not to take it.” His brother’s hand was in his pocket, no doubt holding the pistol tight. The way his eyes flickered across the empty camp parking lot made Maki think of a starved animal.

A starved animal is better than an empty shell.

“It’s an unlocked van with food and clothes and… and pictures, Ren.” This was someone else’s car. Someone else who had a family. Who needed this car just as much as they did.

“They left it alone and unlocked in a campsite parking lot Maki! Even if they were coming back they should have known to at least take the keys!”

Maki closes his eyes and tries not to think about the smiling faces he saw in the photographs.  
He ends up seeing his brothers faces. Ashen and pale with blood and dirt.

“We should leave the stuff we don’t need. Just incase.”

They end up leaving a backpack full of photographs and a small diary with the name Amelia scribbled unevenly on the front in pink crayon on the side of the road. Maki doesn’t know if he hopes the family will find it or for the family to be long gone.

Either way he tries to swallow the guilt.

\---

He’s lost track of how long they’ve been traveling. Lost track of how long this outbreak has been going on. They had been alone so long Maki forgot what other people sounded like. What being around people you weren’t related to felt like.

Perhaps that’s what got him into this mess to begin with.

It was Mitsuru who found them. Or rather. They found Mitsuru.

Ren was syphoning gas for their stolen honda civic and he was attempting to find something to eat from the abandoned cars in the parking lot when he heard Mitsuru calling for them in Japanese. “Aniki! Neesan!”

The two of them drop what they're doing and are there in a heartbeat. Ren already has his gun drawn. Maki hadn’t even thought to grab his. He feels a spiral of guilt but he also feels one of fear.

It’s three people standing there with Mitsuru. Two women and a man. The darker woman is kneeling next to Mitsuru, while the paler one is pointing a shotgun at Ren. Reaching for his pistol he shakily points it at the woman.

“Drop your gun!” His voice is to loud and his accent to thick to be threatening. Everyone knows he’s never used a weapon before.

“You speak Japanese!” The man behind her perks up, speaking in his native language. Maki can't hide the shocked look on his face. This man is tall and white and has dark red hair with freckles all over. Not someone you’d think to speak Japanese at all. Turning to the blonde woman he switches into English, “Char, lower your gun! I wanna talk to them.”

The woman narrows her eyes, and for a moment she reminds Maki of Ren, but lowers the shot gun. Maki lowers his. Ren waits for the nose of her gun to touch the ground before he lowers his. “Y’all let a little boy run around a parking lot unsupervised. Hell would’ya’ve done if we’d been raiders or zombies?”

“I would have shot your fucking head off.” Ren replies in perfect unaccented english. Voice steal and true. The woman smiles. And from then on they stick together.

\---

Their names are Skyler, Charlene and Napia. Maki thinks they’re good people.

Skyler is a bit to talkative but he’s friendly. Apparently he used to be a tour guide.  
Traveled around the globe and back learning languages and cultures.

He loved it. Loved people.

Almost all of Maki’s conversations with him have been in Japanese. Before all this he might have felt insulted. Now however, it’s comforting in a way he never knew.

Ren has stuck to english sense their dad left the house. Maki hadn’t thought about saying anything to Mitsuru in their native language in case it wasn’t something Ren wanted to hear.

Skyler talks about everything he thinks about.  
Tells him about how he met the girls, in an abandoned goodwill down in the valley.  
Tells him about what he’s going to do, go home to New Orleans.  
How he’s got a little sister he’d do anything for. How she’s back home with his Ma.  
How they’re waiting for him.

He tells Maki what he tells the rest of the group.

Tells Maki random bits of trivia, you know the first electric TV was built in San Francisco and the Great Barrier Reef is the only living structure that can be spotted from outer space. He gets along well with Mitsuru who soaks up the trivia like a sponge and asks him all sorts of animal questions.

Charlene on the other hand is cautious and careful.

Maki’s never had a mother but Skyler often says she acts like a strict one.  
She worries and frets but is quick to scold when she thinks they’re doing something wrong.

She and Ren take turns on the perimeter. They handle the guns, the supply runs, Maki suspects the two of them take the most hours on night watch too.

She never talks about her life before.  
Or if she does he never hears it.

When she’s not with his brother she’s tinkering with some sort of engine. Cars are her favorite. When the honda civic breaks down she fixes it. When it breaks down again she finds another car and fixes that one. Ren shows her how to hot wire a car. No doubt trying to impress her. She shows him how to do it better.

Maki doesn’t know if Ren is drawn to her for her usefulness or her looks but he notices them sneak off in the quiet hours of the day. He notices the lingering touch, the sideways glance. How sometimes it's harder to find the both of them close to camp. Normally he would be annoyed with his brothers antics. Exasperation that his brother is up to something with some girl. Now all Maki feels is relief, and a little hope, that his brother is starting to act normal again.

The last girl is Napia.

She’s quiet and calm in a way Maki hasn’t felt since before this all began. The two of them make fast friends as she laughs at his jokes and teases him when he complains about the dirt.

He learns that she loves the dirt.

Loves plants and nature and growing things. Her knowledge on wild herbs has saved their butts more than once in the time they spend together. She shows him a special type of leaf that can dye his hair red and helps him cover up the light brown roots at the top of his head.

He almost thinks he’s fallen for her. When he tells her this in jest one day she tenses up.  
He’s about to apologize when she tells him.

“I don’t think my girlfriend would like that.” Then with a smile she adds, “Don’t really swing that way ether.”

He smiles wide and tells her she’s a lucky girl. Men suck anyway.

It’s not till later that night when Charlene pulls him aside for his watch that he finds out.

Napia’s girlfriend trapped herself in an old restaurant they had been searching.

Gave them time to run.

Charlene asks Maki not to bring it up again.

Maki promises he won’t.

\---

Their time together wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t perfect but it was good.

And like all good things, it came to an end.

The six of them reach Bakersfield and Maki knows it’s time for them to part ways.

“Do you have to go?” Mitsuru is beside himself. Skyler pulls the boy into a hug.

“I gotta get home little bro.” He tells him in Japanese. He’s gotten in a habit of calling Mitsuru little bro like Ren does and he wonders if Skyler knows what it means. “Gotta get back to my mom and sister. They’re waiting for me there.”

Charlene gives Ren a short kiss, it’s the first display of affection ether has shown in front of him, then punches him in the arm. “Don’t fuck up while I’m gone okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. You make sure these two don’t walk off a cliff or something.” Ren rolls his eyes and ignores Skyler’s indignant protests with a smile.

When Maki turns to Napia she pulls him into a tight hug.

“Be safe out there Maki.” She’s not shaking, but he wonders if he is.

“Same goes to you darling. You’re much to cute to end up as one of those zombies.”

She’s smiling as the three of them head east. With a heavy heart Maki watches someone he might have called his best friend in another life walk away for what he thought would be the last time.

Oh how he wishes it had been the last time.

\---

Rotting flesh.

Dark and ashen and wrong.

“Maki!”

Her eyes are grey. Clouded. There’s a hole in her face.

“Maki shoot!”

Her face. That’s not her. That’s not her. That’s

“Maki shoot! You have to shoot!!”

It’s her. It’s her. It’s her. It’s her.

\---

Looking at the festering wound on his arm Maki knows what has to happen.  
Ren’s face is emotionless. Hard as stone. His voice is steady but his hands shake.

“It’s just a scratch. We can fix this.”

“Ren.”

They both know what’s going to happen.

“It’s so shallow Aniki. It might not even be infected.”

“Ren.”

He says it softer this time. Gentle and slow, the tone he uses when Mitsuru is upset.

He’s never used this tone with Ren before.

He’s never had to.

But now he’s about to die.

They’re only about two thirds of the way to LA and Maki is about to die.

Ren is going to have to protect Mitsuru alone. Nineteen is too young to be a guardian.

“Take care of Mitsuru okay.”

\---

Ren will spend more years remembering his brother than knowing him.

Mitsuru will grow old wondering what he did to make his brother leave.

\---

His mouth goes dry as he thinks about leaving his younger brothers.

He thinks about Mitsuru, happy and laughing. Still dangerously naive.

About Ren, stressed out and uncharacteristically quiet. Tragically aware of the real world.

He thinks about dying.

Thinks about everything just… ending.

He doesn’t want to die.

Then he thinks about turning into one of them and empties his stomach into the cracks on the pavement.

\---

They told Mitsuru he was going to meet their dads.

He hopes that much is true.

It’s the first time in months he’s let himself think about them.

Walking down the empty road he lets himself remember his father’s protectiveness and his dad’s warmth.  
Not for the first time he wishes he could have stopped them from leaving.  
Two cardinals fly over head.  
Singing and weaving around each other until they’re over the horizon.

His chest is full of an acute loneliness.

\---

He thinks about when they took him and Ren in.

How they had only planned on adopting one kid at first but they saw the two of them and his father had announced that fate had other plans.

He remembers the hours the four of them had spent painting the two guest rooms upstairs together.  
No one looked at him funny when he asked to paint his room lilac.

His dad had said it suited him.

\---

Leaning against a wooden post he smiled at the memory. He couldn’t feel his arm anymore. The hot burning feeling had dulled down and now he felt nothing at all. Refusing to look at it he tried to continue walking.

He needed to be as far away from them as he could.

He had to protect them any way he could.

\---

He thought about the first time he had the courage to wear a skirt to school. How he had gone to school with his head held high and put on the best act of courage he could manage only to have it shattered by a nameless teenager he can’t even remember the face of.

“Tranny”

“Pervert”

“Fag”

He remembers the faceless teen, about a year and a half older than him, shove him to the floor then hearing an incoherent scream.

The next thing he sees is Ren.

Scrappy 9 year old Ren who’s bruises from his biological father were only just now beginning to fade from his pale skin, running from across the school playground and tackling the teenager to the ground.

His brother and the teenager both end up with a week long suspension.

Ren sports a black eye with pride for two.

\---

Tripping over his own foot Maki finds himself face down on the hard dusty road. Somewhere in his mind he knows it should bother him that he felt none of it but he’s so hungry he can hardly bring himself to care about anything…

If only he…

No.

He has to keep moving.

Slowly he gets up again and continues to walk.

\---

This time when he thinks he remembers adopting Mitsuru.

He remembers how excited their dad was when they got the approval to adopt a baby from the foster system. He and Ren had been their sons for a year and a half now and there had always been a nursery set up in the room closest to their parents.

Babies always went the fastest at the adoption agency.

Of course he had been the exception to that rule hadn’t he?

When their brother arrives he’s wrapped tightly in a blue blanket. His dad was outwardly crying as he cradled him close to his chest and his father has that rare smile on his face he shows whenever he’s proud of something he or Ren had done.

“Come you two!” their dad calls, glee dripping from his voice. “Come look at your new little brother!”

He was bigger than he thought he would be. Fast asleep and wrapped up in a large blanket. He looked like a toddler. A very small toddler but a toddler nonetheless. A misshapen toddler with tangled black hair and skin just slightly too yellow.

Maki loved him.

“Welcome home Mitsuru.” His father says as he takes the baby from their dad.

Ren makes a face and speaks with a high pitch voice that has yet to hit puberty, “I wanted his name to be Link.”

“You can’t name a baby Link, little brother! That’s not a real name.”

“It’s a real name in Hyrule! Why can’t it be a real name here!”

Maki was sure he had some great and witty retort to that but it was at that moment that Mitsuru decided to wake up and giggle out “Hywule!”

“His first word! My little brother’s first word was Hyrule! That’s so cool!”

Their dads laugh and explain how Mitsuru is already one year old. He already knows how to say many words. When asked what his first word was however their dads grow slightly somber.

“The agency doesn’t know what it was.”

Missing pieces. Both Ren and Maki knew what it was like to not know things like that.  
That’s why Maki chooses then to say, “I can’t believe you made our little brother’s first word about your video games.”

The five of them are a family now. And they can make sure Mitsuru’s life has as little gaps in it as possible.

\---

He’s so hungry.  
Why is he walking this way?  
What was he doing?  
He’s so hungry.

Maki can see the trees in front of him moving in the wind but he feels none of its cool comfort.

God.  
He’s so hungry.  
He…

He has to keep moving.  
Away…  
Away from Ren and Mitsuru…

He has to.

\---

The rest comes in flashes and moments.

Sitting with Ren on the weekends watching shitty reality TV.

Coloring with Mitsuru in one of his sketchbooks.

Helping his dad with the laundry.

Reading in the living room with his father.

He remembers his girlfriends and boyfriends both good and bad.

He remembers learning how to put on makeup from youtube channels.

Learning more with Tasha on the hollidays.  
How they thought they looked amazing even with their horrible raccoon eyed makeup job.

He remembers going on Emmett’s youtube show.  
How he had laughed at the comments as they argued about if he was a man or a woman.

He remembers the trips to Japan.

Seeing his actual aunts that were his dad and father’s sisters.  
How they had taken one look at his skirts and dresses and immediately took him out shopping.

Meeting his grandparents and eating shaved ice at a summer festival.

He remembers playing basketball with his father growing up.  
How he and Ren eventually stopped as they grew older.

They never did play with Mitsuru did they?

Their father never pushed them to play with him but sometimes Maki would catch him gazing at their abandoned basketball hoop with nostalgia.  
He feels a small prick of regret about that.

He tries to think about everything and everyone.

Tries to burn their faces into the back of his eyelids.

His father’s face and his dad’s laughter.

The smell of freshly washed sheets and the taste of a home cooked meal.

The feeling of soft velvet on a newly sewn dress.

He tries so hard to remember everything and he falls again.

He doesn’t feel the dirt or the gravel he knows is scraping his face.  
He doesn’t taste the sand or bark on his tongue has he bits the earth beneath him.

He misses them.  
God he misses them

Maki closes his eyes.

He’s alone.  
He’s alone and he’s hungry.  
He’s alone and he’s hungry and he wants to go home.

Home.

From the back of his eyes he sees his family, all of them, smiling and laughing and still.  
Laying there in the dirt with his eyes shut tight he has the airy hope again that maybe, just maybe, the next time he opens his eyes he’ll be home.

\---

He won’t be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and please leave a comment at the end if you enjoyed it :)


End file.
